New X-Men #129 “Fantomex” (September 2002)






The Story: Jean Grey-Summers and Charles Xavier host the wounded Fantomex in the X-Corporation skyscraper while attack helicopters hover outside the window and soldiers fill the lobby.



Jean telepathically staunches his wound's blood flow. When a mean-as-nails Marine storms the room from the elevator, Xavier causes him to remember the traumas of his childhood, reconsidering his life of violence altogether. Finally, Fantomex summons his flying saucer, E.V.A., to scare off the helicopters and take Charles and Jean to the mountainside home in the country where he lives with his blind mother.



Fantomex is not as grateful for the rescue as I might have expected; he has secret documents about government anti-mutant programs, but he wants Xavier to pay big bucks for them. One suspects the “wounded warrior” routine was just a ruse to bring Xavier here for this clandestine sales pitch.

Fantomex gives some exposition: Inside The World, a temporal bubble somewhere in England, time runs much faster than in our world. The World is a breeding ground of genetic experimentation, developing anti-mutant mutants with names like Weapon XII. Some of these were loaded onto a train for a fake accident in the Paris subways. A team of X-Men is there now, getting wrecked. So Fantomex makes Xavier a new offer: Work together to save the X-team while killing Weapon XII. We'll be visiting The World itself in a couple of years.





My Two Cents: Fantomex fancies himself a gentleman thief, his home full of plundered museum loot like sarcophagi and Van Gogh paintings. He gets pretty flirty with Jean. But aren't wonderbras for small-breasted women? (I'm asking, not being an expert.) Is that an insult toward buxom Jean?



His array of mutant powers show him to be something of a Mary Sue: acrobatics, combat, impressive intuition that borders on mind-reading based on observable details like body posture, and apparently illusion-casting as well. Clearly Fantomex is a favorite Morrison creation from whom we can expect to be seeing more.



Fantomex claims that Xavier has a personal worth of $3.5 billion. According to Forbes Magazine, in 2018, having a net worth of $3.5 billion does not even put Xavier in the top 500 richest men in the world. I guess a billion dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, but I still don’t know the commercial source upon which Xavier’s financial empire rests.

The last time I read X-Men, “Weapon X” was a letter, so I don’t know whether Morrison was the first to decide that it’s a Roman numeral with a long string of other experiments before it, and now subsequent to it as well.

The art by Igor Kordey is sometimes awful but sometimes (as on the cover) pretty good. Here's a nice shot of Fantomex mirroring the Egyptian statue behind him.

Easter eggs galore! Note the "I hate French movies" comment from the soldier in the first illustration.

New X-Men #130 “Weapon Twelve” (October 2002)



The Story: Charles Xavier, Jean Grey-Summers, and Fantomex race toward downtown Paris in a flying saucer named E.V.A., who “isn’t a vehicle. She’s my partner. She’s my mutation.” Well, one of them anyway. So, that’s new! Jean telepathically immobilizes Weapon XII, ak.a. Zona-Cluster 6, a.k.a. The Huntsman, a blue giant with his brain on the outside of his head, allowing the X-Men Siryn, Rictor, Cannonball, and Madrox to escape the subway tunnel full of zombies under Weapon XII control.



Xavier takes control of a hundred Madrox Multiple Men to challenge Zona-Cluster 6, who otherwise would be able to zombify all the Madroxes just by infecting one. Fantomex charges toward the subway car where Weapon XII’s techno-coffin lies, shooting many a zombified Parisian in his way. Oh, and killing zombified Darkstar also. He’s sorry! Not really! When Zona is defeated and the dust settles, Jean notices that there’s an empty coffin for Weapon XII, and also one for Weapon XIII. Turns out the Fantomex is Weapon XIII. He finds and hits a killswitch, exploding Zona’s brain; all the zombified civilians drop dead. Fantomex reclaims and disables his own killswitch and flees the scene. The French military arrive to clean up, prompting a humorous exchange with Xavier.



My Two Cents: After some Fantomex-related exposition in the first few pages, the rest of the battle is the ugly underground subway rescue, which has massive civilian casualties. Fantomex charms Jean into letting him go. Somehow the whole experience in the mountaintop villa (and perhaps the journey there?) was an illusion, and the secrets which Fantomex offered to sell are actually in his head, not on a CD-ROM. I’m not sure how he pulled that trick on Xavier and Jean, two of the world’s strongest telepaths, while wearing a helmet that prevents them from reading his thoughts in return. But that’s the premise, so I’ll go with it. The World is an intriguing idea that we won’t see more of for several issues yet to come.



Igor Kordey is on art. Still.

Weapon XII, a.k.a. Zona Cluster-7, is also known as The Huntsman. This reflects Grant Morrison's interest in Welsh mythology. He will soon be writing a Seven Soldiers story for DC based on Welsh myths,with another version of the horned Huntsman once again cast as the heavy.

Oh yeah, hee, they were way behind schedule and Kordey had no time at all to draw these issues.

New X-Men #131 “Some Angels Falling” (October 2002)



The Story: Charles Xavier presides over Darkstar’s funeral. Later, on a hillside near the Xavier Institute, Archangel gives a flying tutorial to winged students including Beak and Angel (II). Everybody soars except Beak. Angel, who’s had a couple of beers, goes from incessantly insulting Beak to kissing him full on the mouth. Er, beak. Later we learn she did it to win a bet with some classmates, but the oblivious Beak is ecstatic over the first attention a girl has ever given him in his life. Some of the students are going with Archangel on some sort of humanitarian mission into Shi’ar space, but Angel is staying behind, so Beak is too, following her like a puppy dog,

Hank McCoy warns Emma Frost off of messing with Scott and Jean’s marriage. “It’s undignified. And Jean will kill you.” Logan’s working that concern as well, warning Scott to take steps to improve his marriage. All to no avail; even while Scott’s body is in the Blackbird, his mind is literally far away, having a telepathic fantasy/therapy session with Emma that starts with skydiving, and gets more twisted thereafter.



My Two Cents: Unhealthy romance is in the air in this issue. Angel is too emotionally stunted to express overt attraction to Beak, so she resorts to pulling his proverbial pigtails with a string of “freak” jokes. She also enjoys his effusive expressions of devotion, something she’s probably never had before and secretly feels unworthy of, so she settles for watching him out of the corner of her eye. We see again how Beak has the traits of young Grant Morrison, including self-identification as a "straight edge" (drug-free) punk rocker.



Meanwhile, Emma genuinely is helping Scott process the mental trauma of his possession experience, but she doesn’t know who to relate to a man non-sexually, so she drags him into her own drama. This would not end well even if he were unmarried, instead of being married to a creature of passion who’s been known to eat solar systems when enraged (or simply hungry).

So it’s a double-entrendre of an issue title, referring both to Angel falling for Beak despite her emotional wounds, and the formerly angelic Scott falling for Emma because of his emotional wounds. (The funeral of Darkstar might allow even a third fallen angel in the mix, though we haven't seen enough of her to really miss her.) Morrison is in full-on soap opera mode here, but it’s effective, credible character development.



I’m kind of glad that we can go for five months of X-Men only giving Wolverine a few panels in one issue. He was way overexposed at one point and is just not All That. As part of the ensemble, he’s fine. Morrison has his own super-cool pet super-soldier now anyway, namely Fantomex. But at the moment, the spotlight belongs to Jean, Scott, and Emma, plus Beak and Angel.

It’s good to see some nod to the notion that the Shi’ar suffered disaster at the hands of Cassandra Nova back when she was controlling Lilandra to do who-knows-what. Better than hearing about it would be to see it, of course, especially to justify that Archangel and a team of X-students will somehow be helpful in the clean-up, given that the Shi’ar already have many superheroes of their own.



John Paul Leon is on pencils and Bill Sienkiewicz on inks again. Bill’s quirky art style comes through more in this issue than it did in the Xorn spotlight, which is a good thing. This is the second issue dated October 2002. Was this book publishing every four weeks instead of monthly? Seems that pressure might contribute to the series being rushed in production, as we know it to have been.

Is it too late to say that I think Kordey's contribution to this run is far more to my taste than that of XXXXX ?

Even setting aside the ridiculous deadline he had to face, I think his organic and gritty approach was far more interesting than a more typical super-heroic style where all characters are underwear models striking dramatic poses.

I dont like Kordey's issues despite their short production time.... I like Kordey's issues because they have good art, period!